The Rider Line
by Dracones
Summary: The Rider line is an impressive one, and, even left to its own devices, it never is exactly ordinary. Some would say Fate were the cause, others genetics. Who knows, truthfully, when the cause must be no less confusing than the effect? And who would have guessed how it progressed after Alex? This is its story.
1. Arthur Leighton

**The Rider line is an impressive one, and, even left to its own devices, it never is exactly ordinary. Some would say Fate were the cause, others genetics. Who knows, truthfully, when the cause must be no less confusing than the effect?**

**This story will be comprised of several chapters of oneshots, each of the next member along in the family line, starting just after Alex. There will be connections and links, but ultimately each chapter will be entirely about one individual with little follow-on, until everything comes together at the very end. May not take the paths you expect.**

* * *

Arthur was six by the time he was really asking questions. He had previously wondered why, in the stories, there was a mummy bear and a daddy bear and then a little bear, but he only had a mummy. He would frown a little at those bits of the story, but carry on listening to his mum read anyway.

When he had finally asked, on his birthday, after his friends and their mummies and daddies had left the house, his mum had sat him on her lap, hugged him, and told him that his father had wanted to, but hadn't been able to stay with them, though she assured him that he really had wanted to.

Arthur asked what had happened, but his mum shook her head, and told him he'd find out someday.

* * *

When he was ten, Arthur Leighton had asked again multiple times, but got the same response. Frustrated, and with the desire to punch things, he joined a martial arts group, learning Karate. He took to it quickly, learning fast and taking delight in pummelling the punching bags.

* * *

In secondary school, he could do the academic subjects, but found them rather pointless. He took to the sports side of things with ease, however, being good at most things but specialising as a Central Defensive Midfielder in football, playing as the person who was always available, in space, ready to thread passes and make interceptions. He had the right attributes for the position too; control, an eye for a pass, understanding of the game, and good reading of the ball in the air.

It was around that time, too, that his mother told him the truth.

She had never really known his father. She had been at a club, not quite drunk but getting there. He had been there too, handsome, young, and looking undeniably sad, sipping a shaken Martini and not really looking at anything.

She had wandered over, spoken, brought him a couple more drinks, and they ended the night at her house.

She had woken up at six the next morning, but she was alone. There had been a note on the bedside table:

_I apologise for both coming and leaving like this. I was having a moment of mounting stress and wanted to have some form of outlet. I apologise for the fact that it had to be you. In my line of work we call it a mid-life crisis, though I'm not sure you'll get the joke._

_To add weight to my apology, and in case complications arise, I am leaving a substantial amount of money in the kitchen, on the table. It is all real, and untraceable, as it's in cash, and I am not attempting to con you, merely to rid myself of my shame at losing control of myself enough to let what happened happen._

_Please do not attempt to return it, it will do neither of us any good._

_AR_

Jean Leighton had shown Arthur the note, and told him that there had been thousands on that table, enough to, combined with the money and maternity allowance from her accountancy job, move them to the higher quality region of Chelsea, where they now lived.

She had chosen to keep the baby in honour of the man's generosity, and because she now felt slightly lonely herself, as she said.

Arthur wondered for a few days as to what sort of a person would have that short a life expectancy, that much money, and still be willing to give it away, not to mention who would be so frustrated over losing control. He could only come up with one option; undercover police officer.

* * *

After picking up a GCSE and an A-level in P.E., (Physical Education (sports)), as well as a first grade black belt, Arthur Leighton joined the Metropolitan Police.

* * *

He looked like his father, his mother said, whenever she saw him in uniform.

From that, he deduced that his father had brown hair, brown eyes, and held himself tall and proud. He liked the description.

* * *

On the job one day, a raid on an area of suspected smuggling activity of various types, Arthur, aged twenty-five, had heard gunfire in the area before they broke in. When they did so, guns forwards, with yells of "This is the police! Put your hands up and throw down your weapons!" and so on, there was no response but for six of the men to run out of the back door (which was being covered by another team) and the other two to attempt to chase them.

Arthur had managed to grab one of the men by the shoulder, but the guy just held up a badge, cool as anything. "MI6," he said.

When the others had been apprehended, no casualties to either side, the contents of the warehouse were found to include enough guns and ammunition for half an army.

They had waited with the agents for support to come, and a man with short black hair fading to grey had stepped out of a Mercedes five minutes later. He was healthy for his age, which seemed to be around fifty-five.

He had walked forwards, hand extended, with the introduction of, "Agent Benjamin Daniels, MI6 SO. Here with the Official secrets act for you gentlemen." He spoke like an army man of some description.

Arthur stepped forwards, to shake the extended hand. "Arthur Leighton, commander of this rabble."

He had expected - what? A smile, maybe? - but he received an expression of shock, almost recognition from the MI6 man.

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. Strange.

The men had signed the papers, sealing their lips, but Arthur had all but forgotten about the weapons by the next day, busy wondering why he had overheard the man named Daniels muttering incessantly into a mobile to someone named "Wolf" about someone named "Cub."

* * *

Two raids later, he found a wife.

While Arthur Leighton very much lived for the moment, Danielle Fey had a far calmer lifestyle that evened his own out. Normally, at any rate.

She had been held hostage against her rich father, a Lord of some kind, though the kidnappers couldn't have known that he'd disowned her the moment she decided to do something with her life and went into the world of work, finding a job that eventually led to her becoming one below the CEO of a major advertising company.

He'd met her in the rescue, and they'd met up afterwards.

And it was two years into their relationship that he proposed, and one year after that, the baby was born.

* * *

**Sorry people, but that will be the last cameo from any real characters. They'll all be dead or old too soon for more!**

**Hope you liked it! More on the way!**


	2. Izzy Leighton

Everyone said she had her father's looks, but more her mother's personality.

Though she outwardly seemed calm most of the time, self-contained, maybe even a bit of a computer geek, she knew that she was just as fond of action as her father. She just liked it in a different way, which earned more money and was far more up to date.

When Izzy was only ten, her mum's company had had a problem with a hacker interfering with their data and cutting their profit by about 25%. Her mum had panicked a lot, called a lot of people, and got insurance companies to repay the money.

Isabel Leighton had Wikipedia-searched "Computer hackers."

The accepted and most common usage of the term, though not always used correctly, refers to the bypassing of computer security systems, generally with malicious intent. However, she also learnt that some were used for fixing security breaches. Upon hearing of her interest, her friend Tess's big brother Jack had told her that some companies employed hackers to try and break into their websites, so that they could find and fix any security software issues. In fact, one entire floor of the thirteen floor building he had done his work experience in had been dedicated to hacking their own software.

Her father broke doors for national security. She would try to break codes.

* * *

She had made that decision aged ten, and had the determination to go through with it. She put in extra hours, read lines of code and text on security, and aged eighteen was hired by her mum's company as their official hacker.

* * *

Though she had always known her dad well, it had surprised her when she heard that he hadn't known his. She joked that she had thought he was too stupid to know how to be a good dad without some kind of inspiration.

He said he'd watched Outnumbered and hoped for the best.

But it was her grandmother (Dad's side) who told her the story, the same one Izzy's dad had been told, when she was twenty. Her dad showed her the note, too.

She had listened intently as her grandmother, now sixty-nine and riddled with arthritis, had described her grandfather, and how she would just love to have the chance to at least see him, at most know what had happened to him afterwards.

Izzy asked when they had met, approximately; month, year, week, day, time? And where were they exactly, which club? Which area of the club?

She got the answers, all but the exact time. The note had been next to the calendar, and her grandmother was known to have almost photographic memory.

With that information, she resolved to attempt at least to find out who he was. For her grandmother's sake.

* * *

The club had the same name, the same owners, the same layout. She hung out there a couple of nights, getting a feel for the place and working out the placement of the CCTV.

Then, one Friday before a bank holiday weekend, she logged into the club's official e-mail and sent a message to all employees that they were short-staffed and not to come in.

* * *

Though some turned up nonetheless, having checked with their bosses, they were indeed short-staffed. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, hers. During the commotion, as too few bouncers were holding back too many people, and the manager and security workers and everyone tried to calm people down at the doors, she snuck in the back door.

As the CCTV was digitally stored now, she quickly logged onto the mainframe computer in the security room that was connected to the cameras. The first thing she did was rewind and pause the cameras that showed her, back to when they didn't, then restore them to their current view, basically as if she was never there.

Then she wound back through the files, for the year, the month, the day, then she copied the file for the right day onto a USB, set the right cameras to pause for three minutes, then left with time to spare.

* * *

She reviewed the footage, finding the right camera and zooming in on the face when it appeared. A quick screenshot and a copy and paste as a picture file onto the USB later she was printing the screenshot, before she closed her laptop and drove to her grandmother's.

* * *

Her gran cried with pleasure when she showed her the photograph, calling her dad over to look.

Izzy was only glad he didn't ask her how she got it, though she got the feeling he just didn't want to know.

From there, however, Izzy could search no more; only the government had the face recognition technology required to find more. However, it was while searching for a way to miss out that obstacle that she found Paul, a governmental worker in MI5 who was into the identification business. And he managed it.

The picture was a 90% match with police constable Arthur Leighton, unsurprisingly, and a 95% match with someone who had died forty-three years ago, but still was of too high a clearance as an official spy for them to even find his name.

* * *

Jean Leighton had simply smiled slightly at the news. "I guess it was a mid-life crisis," she said, "and I guess Arthur was right about his undercover policeman theory!"

Izzy had smiled more than slightly when Paul had asked her out the following day.

* * *

So... Hope you're liking my OCs so far, guys! Trying to keep things realistic and linking here, and as far as I can see it's going alright... Please tell me what you think!

And to everyone who has reviewed, especially Apple in the Ocean, thank you so much for the encouragement! it's incredible, the responses I'm getting from every review, and I just have to say that you're all great!


	3. Chris Rourke

He knew his father, Paul, worked for the government, and his mother worked with computers, but Chris never knew more than that.

It was discussing their parents in class, with his best friend Timothy, a nice, shy kid, whose parents were doctors, when Chris began to wonder what they did on a day-to-day basis. While Tim had told him about the type of operation his dad had had to do, and the number of patients his mum had got through one day, all he knew of his parents' work was that his dad had come home really tired on Thursday, and his mum was the fastest typer ever.

* * *

He began to wonder more and more what they did, and one day asked his dad what his work was like.

As it turned out, his dad was a part of MI5, dealing with problems like possible internal terrorists in the country, and identifying criminals through CCTV, which seemed like the most impressive job ever to Chris. You had a regular routine, but you were still out there protecting the country! It was like being a safe police officer!

* * *

From then on, Chris Rourke basically idolised his father in every way, and intended to follow him into his career. He applied himself in everything he did, including a karate course recommended by his grandfather, on his mother's side.

But he was around fifteen when that changed.

* * *

They didn't think he was ever up as late as he was, and they didn't think his wall bordered theirs closely enough for him to overhear their conversations. He had previously been slightly disgusted by some things he'd heard recently, but this was just shocking.

His mum had been telling dad that she had noticed that Chris just wanted to be like dad, but seemed to be ignoring her in comparison.

Dad had told her that she didn't need to worry, he was just as important and interesting as she was, probably even less so, and not to worry (again).

Chris lay awake for a long time that night.

* * *

The next day, he asked his mother what her work was like.

Izzy looked at him, eyebrow raised in a similar way to that regularly used by Chris's grandfather.

"You overheard us, didn't you?" Chris could only nod, as sorrowfully as he could manage. "You know you're not a very good actor, right?" was the next question, to which the answer again was a nod.

* * *

As it turned out, his mum did have a far more interesting job than he'd expected. Working to both protect and hack websites and information would be really cool to any teen, of course, especially in a world rife with technology.

However, Chris was now faced with an issue. Which of his parents' jobs was the coolest? And, if he was to pursue one of them, which one?

* * *

He eventually decided that he would like to do something modern, up to date, yet useful to the country, a sort of compromise between the two.

The government, it was clear, needed better protection, especially of their personal affairs and so on, with the growing power of tabloid media. Chris asked both his parents what they thought on him assisting with that for a living, and if they'd approve.

His mum was glad he was taking their thoughts into account, and suggested that she could help him learn if that was what he had wanted.

His dad said he could probably help when his work experience came around, and get him into a good position to start something like that.

* * *

Their support worked, and soon, so did he, part-time and on weekends, but paid twelve pounds an hour and working his way up in the system. By the time he left school at sixteen, he was at least the third best in the department.

* * *

He bought a house of his own, spacious and modern, a couple of streets away from the train station that led to his work. His neighbour, a young computer engineer, quickly became good friends with him and his old friend Timothy after his laptop crashed once. As good as he was at coding and hacking, when the hard-drive crashed almost irreparably he was not the guy to fix it. That job fell to Dan Harris, the guy next door, and he and Chris got on easily almost immediately.

* * *

Despite the coolness of the job, the restless Chris grew bored. Though it was fun to be allowed to search through famous people's messages, he came across a lot of terms he didn't understand exactly, and searching for them on an online dictionary kind of removed the elegance from the spying aspect he put into his work.

* * *

Craving some form of excitement, he obtained the picture of his great-grandfather that his mother had obtained for his great-grandmother. It had a similar facial structure and hair colour to his, though his eyes weren't brown, and were instead green, obtained from his father. The style of his own hair, too, was like his father's; straighter and less windswept than that of his mother, as well as that of the man in the picture.

He brought the picture in on his next trip to Westminster, and ran it through a scanner for face recognition, the same as his mother had done previously. It gave, again, 90% Arthur Leighton, 95% unknown spy, and, strangely, 75% Chris Rourke, not to mention 70% or so Isabel Leighton.

He clicked through to passcode, and keyed in that which he had set up for the deputy PM. All he got was a name.

Alex Rider.

* * *

After he told his mother, his grandfather, and his great-grandmother (who wasn't going down easily at ninety-three), who were all delighted to know at least that, it was at least a few weeks until Chris reverted to boredom again.

Dan Harris had suggested that he should go out more, meet a few more people, have a drink. He complied, and went along with it, though why he was taking advice from Harris of all people was slightly worrying, even to himself.

* * *

Chris found that Dan's advice actually turned out to be useful and entertaining. The three (Chris, Dan, and Timothy) went out, generally relying on Dan for directions and introductions to a few of his friends.

It got a bit harder than before after Dan got himself monumentally drunk, but Chris managed to direct them home, with some help from a friend of Dan's who knew the way, in fact, she lived just round the corner.

He was eighteen at the time, and so were Dan and Tim. She, Katie, was the first of many girlfriends, and the first person apart from Dan to temporarily quench Chris's thirst for excitement, though not for very long.

Strangely, the only one to last was the only one not looking for it, and the only one met through work.

* * *

As he was just about the best in the department at what he did, at twenty, but his organisational skills were shit, he could be loaned out to other organisations or people at extortionate fees. A few celebrities paid for his services as well, and their email chatter was far more interesting (and, generally, intelligible).

He chose to anonymously arrange a few meetings with journalists to obtain a bit of cash for some of the less innocent chatter, when he was more bored, but was almost always re-hired to fix any problems, which he then did, earning even more money.

However, he wasn't stupid, and he eased off that after a short while. Patterns could be noticed when watching known hackers who'd accessed the files, not to mention monitoring his monetary transactions, and being found was not his idea of fun.

While broadcasting their information no longer held its appeal, he had enough money to pursue other interests, and went on holidays, paint-balling and skydiving trips, and so on whenever he got the chance.

* * *

However, at twenty-two, something finally made him relax his hectic life a little. When he was working in the office, a call came in from an actress who wanted to improve her personal security on all levels possible, and while government departments mainly did work for themselves, they weren't above improving influential opinions of themselves.

He was sent over.

Though he wasn't all that into movies, that didn't mean he wasn't into hot actresses.

Due to the characterisation of her that he'd seen in the one film of her Dan and Timothy had dragged him to, (a Bond one,) he'd suspected she'd be a pushover. How wrong he was.

Gabrielle van Mille was loud, questioning, and could talk the hind leg off an elephant. She questioned him incessantly, and though some would get annoyed, he had long since got used to Dan's blabbering, and besides, there was never a dull moment with her there.

Not to mention the fame and money.

But she was certainly not a pushover. She would flirt, sure, and seemed to genuinely enjoy his company, in fact, he enjoyed hers. But she would go somewhere, tease, go a little further, then pull back, as if unconcerned, and she was a good actor.

Almost pulled it off, sometimes.

* * *

Eventually, over the course of several meetings after her computer had a couple of neatly planted bugs come up on Chris's days off, they started officially dating.

The tabloids, the future plans, the movies, and the money were surely enough to keep him excited for years, not to mention Gabrielle herself and her unquenchable personality.

* * *

Hopefully a slightly more exciting chapter this time, trying to input a touch of that Rider thirst for action there, as well as a bit of luck and skill. Hope you guys like it!

And Chris is a bit of a rebel here, isn't he! I wasn't sure I'd meant for that to happen, but hey, it did. Hope he turned out well!

And thanks again for all your comments! They really are wonderful, thank you so much!


	4. Paul Rourke

His birth was a claim to fame.

The tabloids were all over his parents, as well as the magazines. A famous actress and a hacker, young and good-looking, rising stars in their own fields and seeming like genuinely nice people; a rare thing in the (very) late twenty-first century, and it was pounced on by the media. And that was before either the wedding or the pregnancy was announced.

So, obviously, when Paul, named in honour of his recently deceased grandfather, who had lost his battle with cancer, was born, the media was in a frenzy for at least a few days before calming down again.

* * *

When he was nine, his great-grandfather, Arthur, died of old age and loneliness, his wife having died of complications resulting from two strokes six years previously.

* * *

And then, deprived of her only son and stiffer than ever from arthritis, his hundred-and-four-year-old great-great-grandmother passed away. Paul was ten at the time.

The funeral was a quiet thing, in a quiet graveyard in Chelsea. She'd lived in the area all her life, and her large house had been left, in trust, to Paul. He was taken aback by that news, and it barely had time to register before the funeral.

She was lowered into the ground, and in the service beforehand, her favourite song had been played.

Paul had never been very into music, particularly old music, but this was a change for sure.

It was an old track, very early 21st century, by David Bowie, called "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)." Rather than the pop music of his generation, full of loops, high notes, and 'powerful,' catchy choruses, this was understated, with soulful tones and metaphors throughout.

In addition, it made Paul for the first time consider the fame of his parents in something other than a fully positive light. It seemed now to mean that he was always being watched, when he wasn't the actor or the one that had made the magazine headlines with her. It didn't seem fair on him.

While considering that, he sat down in the graveyard. It was a few minutes before he realised he was sitting on a grave, and he glanced at it hurriedly before standing up.

His thoughts turned to his great-great-grandmother again. She hadn't spoken to him much, but one of the things she had told him was that his father had discovered the name of the father of her son, whom she had never really known but for the fact that he was a good and generous person.

The name she had given was Alex Rider, which was why Paul had thought back to her again.

Because the name on the grave he had sat on was Ian Rider.

* * *

Paul would never know that the gravestone to the right of Ian's read "Alex Rider."

* * *

When they got home, he searched David Bowie up on Wikipedia, and went on search tangents to other bands and genres in the late 20th-early 21st centuries. He went on tangents, from Bowie to the Kooks, who were named after one of the previously named's songs, to Indie music, Britpop, bands connected to Britpop, Cud, an indie band, and, through references to gigs on ancient YouTube comments, The Family Cat, then "Peel sessions," and eventually on to bigger stuff like Blur and Oasis. He caught himself up in the musical world as it once was, wondered what had happened since, and searched "what happened to music" in Google.

He came up with a number of blogs, that outlined how the rising popularity of 21st century pop had driven most, if not all, other genres to a stop. The rather aptly named "The Outsiders" had been among the last to gain any success, and Paul spent a while listening to their songs before moving on.

* * *

A while later, on his eleventh birthday, he asked for and received a drumkit. With headphones in, he kept time with the music they played, searching more up on YouTube when each song ended. Led Zeppelin and The Editors were both good for rhythm, and Nirvana were a challenge to play.

It was around then that he moved up to secondary school, and his parents brought his way into a fancy private school. It wasn't that he wasn't smart enough to get in anyway, but they claimed it was just to be sure.

There were a few similarly-minded students there, who were uneasy with their parents' wealth, and they sort of formed a large group, occasionally at odds with those who boasted of their wealth regularly. A few others, but not many, shared Paul's views on music, or played themselves, and a band was eventually formed when they were around sixteen.

* * *

Henry, Charles, Jason, and Paul were their names. Paul was on the drums, Henry was lead singer and lead guitar, Charles was middle guitar, Jason was bass guitar, but they all contributed to the backing vocals.

To start with, they replicated songs from bands they wanted to be similar to, before beginning to work on their own stuff.

In a style similar to the Arctic Monkeys' first album, their music had a strong bass sound throughout, with middle and lead guitars linking and overlapping on top and strong, rhythmic drumming behind.

Also similar to the Arctic Monkeys were their sarcastic lyrics and general air of nonchalance, which Paul had contributed to a lot.. One of their first songs included the lines, "The place has gone to the dogs, too bad I'm a cat,/And I may only have seven lives left but I don't care about that!"

Henry sang with a strong accent and character, Jason kept a steady and catchy beat going, Charles backed them both up and added a layer to the music, and Paul himself was the basic rhythm, many of the others' pieces taking the cue from him to be sure it was the right place.

* * *

Testing the market, they released a few snippets of their tracks onto select sites on the Internet, and got a response that was at least half decent.

* * *

Together, they gathered enough money from their parents and their own bank accounts to fund a day-long recording session, and their first album was made. Not named, and nor were they, but made.

After much debate, the album was called "Punk-ey Dory," a spinoff of Bowie's album title "Hunky Dory," and the band known as "The Happy Rebels."

* * *

Though the album sold well, the first non-pop album to do so in twenty years, during the follow-up live tour Paul's mother got frustrated with both his constant absence and his career choice. Not that she could do anything, but talking to her, usually a struggle to get a word in edgewise anyway, became a nightmare when she literally was non-stop going on about whatever came to mind; usually either her latest film or how disappointed she was with him.

* * *

However, whenever the band next tried to produce any music, it was released as demo tapes on YouTube the next day, inexplicably.

This continued for a month before Paul's dad quietly commented, "Sorry son, I've got nothing against you myself, but your mum says it's this or we get a divorce until you stop."

At twenty, Paul Rourke officially retired from the music industry. He had quietly told the other band members, and they had found another drummer, but whenever they got in touch they assured him that he was better than the new guy.

* * *

For the next few years, Paul watched The Happy Rebels - his band - change the face of the music scene and bring in other bands to follow on from them. He was living in his grandmother's old home, off the money she had left him, that his parents had given him, and that he had gained from his time in the band.

* * *

Eventually, he decided that if he couldn't record, he would at least preform live, and joined a young band that assured him they were only doing live performances. He went gigging with them for a few nights, dragging his drumkit around bars and pubs, gaining a bit of cash in the process. And that was his life for a while, coping with the boredom well and playing drums.

* * *

Then that band grew more popular, thought about recording, and he quit.

* * *

He moved between bands and styles for a while, until he was twenty-seven and going on forty, as he could feel a mid-life crisis breathing down the back of his neck.

* * *

He took to writing poetry, but found he was sub-consciously adding a backing drumbeat in his head and wondering about how to overlay the different guitar sounds into the music.

It was only then that he considered songwriting as a career choice.

It was only a week after that that he sent a list of potential songs to the still-going-strong Happy Rebels.

* * *

He then, after assuring his father that he was only attending a recording session, met up with the group again, and it was then that he met their producer, Violet, who was extremely adept at bossing the group around, which he had always thought impossible before.

He admired her willpower greatly, and they went out for a couple of months, before deciding that it didn't work, and they were better-off with a professional relationship.

It was unfortunate, really, that a month after that she called and informed him that she was pregnant.

* * *

**Okay, this one's done! Hope it was alright, and that you all like it; I spent a while on this one, more than I did on most of the others anyway, so fingers crossed it turned out alright.**

**Oh, and did anyone else watch the Grand National? My horse came in seventh, unfortunately, but my sister's was sixth; both out of the top spots, but she still beat me! I was just hoping for a final burst of speed... But it was not to be... :(**


	5. John Hazel

John Hazel lived a confused life, but so, it seemed, did his parents. While he did know his father, and his father knew him and his mother, and they even all lived in the same house, he had been given his mum's name, and his mum and dad never kissed like he saw other parents do.

It was odd, so he questioned it, and he found that while they had him, they were not a couple, although they had been before he was born. He asked why they weren't anymore.

They had looked at each other, smiled understandingly, and his dad had told him that it just hadn't worked out right. He'd shrugged and mumbled "Okay," but remembered their words, to puzzle over later.

* * *

And he certainly did try to work it out. From what he could see in the time they were together, they were friends, but not a couple, though they lived in the same house for the sake of convenience in raising him. From that, he worked out that he must have originally been a mistake, but one that was welcomed, as they both certainly did love him and care for each other, so he didn't mind much.

They were both in the music business, so it was rather strange that he was more at ease when all was peaceful and quiet. Though he did appreciate music, it did occasionally get a bit loud.

John was more liable to sink back and observe, in fact, he enjoyed watching interactions. Sometimes, he thought he might understand the conversation more than those taking part in it, though some of his classmates at school seemed unintelligible sometimes, and he found adult conversations more interesting. His classmates only ever talked about the same things, which got rather dull.

* * *

At family gatherings, he also tended to fade into the background. His mother's side seemed normal, large; his father's side seemed to be smaller, close-knit; still friendly, normal, but there seemed to be something... Unpredictable about them, something interesting. He found himself hoping that he took after them; they seemed that they could make something of any situation, and he admired that trait, and hoped it might exist within himself. His mother's side seemed too... Normal.

It was odd, really.

* * *

In his primary school, he took on several of the important roles (not all at once, but separately,) when they had assemblies, where they performed stories to the rest of the school, and it turned out he was a good actor by their standards. However, when he was offered the chance to take part in the drama club in secondary school, when he was thirteen, he turned it down nonetheless. It just wasn't in his interests; he wanted to do things more interesting, more exciting, more intellectually challenging than playing an assigned role, saying assigned lines at assigned times.

With sports, particularly football, it was similar. Though he could probably be good if he tried, he lacked the motivation, the purpose. Observation was his thing; noting the reactions of one team to the other, particularly in terms of what single players did or were prone to do. Eventually, he also worked out how it was possible to get the better of each individual player.

He began to assist a few of the people who had the ability and willpower to improve, by simply giving a few tips on what others were or were not prone to do, and how to exploit that. He found himself to be evaluating players in a similar way, too, when watching football, and knew that the best at the game were the unpredictable ones, and the ones that could predict and adjust better. And so he learnt the art of reading body language.

* * *

John was respected at least a little by all his classmates, though he once heard some of them saying that, if he put the effort in, he could be one of the most popular kids in the school. He didn't particularly care, though. He'd looked at the popular kids, seen how false, how gaudy they seemed, how little regard they paid to those around them. He could have listened to their words, and mimicked their styles and mannerisms until eventually they took up his own, but he found he didn't want to. He would be cast forward, into public opinion. He would be judged on what he did and had done before. He would be forced, maybe, to do certain things for a reputation to be maintained. That was gang mentality, criminal mentality, and certainly not a mentality he wanted to be getting into any time soon.

In his mind, it was simply an unhealthy mentality to have.

* * *

From there, he got good grades in all his exams, and awards and good comments all-round from his teachers. On a recommendation by one of his teachers, his P.E teacher to be precise, who had been injured in service, he was noticed and, for want of a better word, scouted, by the British Secret Intelligence Service, in MI6.

Though it wasn't exactly John's dream job, it provided an outlet for his quick and analytic mind, and gave him a cause and conviction enough to apply himself as well as he was capable of.

His immediate training was based around thinking on his feet. From there, it turned into forming and getting into a character or role, which he was good at, to the point of making the role realistic and his own, which took skill, and he received good praise about.

Though mediocre when it came to fighting skills in terms of hand-to-hand, he was good at targeting weak points and tactical analysis with weapons of mostly any kind, which generally stood him in good stead.

They also, at the MI6 training facility, taught about the basic uses of computers, in terms of protection, interception, and infiltration of data sources. Digital warfare and "hacktivism" were basic principles in any kind of business in the modern age, and exploitation of inadequate control over anything digital was commonplace. For those in the intelligence services to not know at least the basics would be unacceptable, not to mention a lapse in state security.

By the time he had adequately completed the course, including a gruelling four-week course at an SAS base, he was eighteen.

* * *

For non-digital threats to come in, at that time period, was a rarity. For large-scale terror warnings to not be sorted out by police in minutes was a rarity. Suspicions not confirmed by hacking a computer, simply made more confusing, were anomalies to say the least.

John's first mission, then, was everything he hadn't expected.

* * *

Supposedly a twenty-year-old on a gap year, he was sent to Sri Lanka, off the coast of India. On the north side of the island, where he was headed, there were rumours of an outside power pushing for the reformation of the Tamil Tigers, the revolutionary early 1970s-late 80s guerrilla group.

On the first night, he scouted out the bars and clubs. He knew from his short time with the SAS that soldiers, when away from the warzone, would often go to bars and so on, to drown their sorrow and because they had little else to do. He presumed it was the same for revolutionaries.

He spoke to several people around the town who seemed to have war wounds, and inquired how they got them, as there had been few well known, out-and-out wars in the area for years. The clearest reply he got was a "You don't want to know" in shoddy English, while the rest simply shrugged.

The clearest _answer_ he got was either the sight of a concealed hunting knife on the small of a man's back as he shrugged and pulled his jacket tight, the gun holstered inside the jacket of another man, which was revealed by its weight pulling at the fabric and a slight glint of dull metal as he turned away, or the tiger tattoo under the hair of a man who had clearly once been bald, grown his hair, and not noticed that he was balding again before the tiger became visible.

He transmitted one message to MI6 that night: "Tigers on the prowl; injured, but not as extinct as first thought."

There was one reply. An image of a tiger pawprint.

The message was clear. _Track._

* * *

He followed them the next night, after a bit of scouting the day before. He got the general impression of the formation of the town and how to find your way, then headed back to the hotel and rested.

He would need that rest.

* * *

Over the next few days, he busied himself by setting challenges; the amount of suspected Tigers he could set trackers on. He'd brought approximately a hundred with him, plus the undetectable personal tracker he kept on him at all times, to alert '6 of his whereabouts, so he could afford to use a few up.

After a few especially tricky plants, he'd found bugs on himself before reaching the hotel, and once picked up a trail, which he "accidentally" threw off after heading in the wrong direction to the safehouse he'd brought on the second day, and similarly far from the hotel he still resided in.

* * *

It was seven days into the stay when he saw all the trackers he had planted moving out of the city and away further inland, towards higher, forested ground. It was a mark of pride to him that not one of the people he'd thought was suspicious was remaining.

He snuck after them, using all the skills he could to remain undetected, but still admiring how they seemed to be quieter than him without trying, shadows of the night, tigers of the dark.

It was an hour later when he stumbled across the campsite. Upon switching to a more localised tracking system, he realised that, though most of the active dots were clustered together in a small area, there was one that seemed to be in a position on the high ground ahead of him. It was a location that would be good for observing the group, but not for discussing things with them, which made John suspect there was something going on.

Either this man was a high-priority enemy in a separate location with other leaders, or he was an ally.

Knelt at the rim of what appeared to be a campsite located around a small but wide valley, he threw a small, grey, listening device, at the same time as one man was clambering down a slope of scree. Plugging in his concealed earphones, so he could listen in, he crept towards the point of the separate tracker, curious, and practical at the same time.

He mainly picked up meaningless nonsense in some Indian dialect as he was moving towards a rock on the ridge line, but it hushed quickly when he got close to the place. Suspicious, John halted, and slowly peered over the ridge of the valley.

A large man had emerged from a tent of some sort, of which he could only see the tarpaulin roof and wall, which were a murky-green camouflage colour. The man, who was heavily bearded, was henceforth to be known as "Santa."

Even from the top of the valley, John could practically see his aura of command. It was something in his posture, his gaze, that told John he could control the two hundred or so men in front of him with the utmost power and respect, and he knew it well.

The man spoke in heavily accented English, but it was still more understandable than the language habits of many London teenagers.

He told the men of how they would put a halt to the destruction of their home environment by those for whom it was not theirs to control. He spoke of how they would seize the thirty-odd airports and single helipad on the island, only allowing their allies from the Indian subcontinent to land and fortify their positions. And he spoke of similar movements across India and the Middle East.

And John got it all recorded.

* * *

He entirely forgot about the other tracker, on the ridge. However, it seemed the holder of the tracker had noticed and followed him as he attempted to dodge the returning Tigers and get to his hotel before he was spotted.

Because two days later, he returned to find a stranger in his hotel chair.

* * *

"Have MI6 got back to you yet?" had been the words thrown at his back after he'd returned and gone straight to the balcony, staring across the town. "Are they pulling you out, sending back-up so you can take the Tigers down... Or are they seeing how you do alone?"

John's Beretta 107 Ignite, the 19-round capacity latest addition to the semi-automatic range dating back to before the Second World War, was pointing at the other young man's face before he'd finished his first sentence, but the other's cool grin never wavered, and nor did the aim of his highly modified Luger.

"Calm, John. Don't you know that you always preferred to do your own thing anyway? To be in control? To do things the exciting way, to improvise..."

John's reply was blunter than the average pebble. "What do you want from me?"

"No introductions first?"

"We appear to have skipped the pleasantries already and moved on to the shootout, so I see no need for civilities."

"Humour me," came the reply.

John already knew a bit about the man. He knew his way around a gun well, enjoyed mind games, and seemed to be of Scottish origin, though it was only a hint of an accent and could well be misleading. Though he wasn't overly strong, there was a graceful control of even his smallest movements that gave him the appearance of a martial artist, and there was a crease from a bullet wound on the side of his pale neck.

His true eye colour, though they appeared green, was doubtlessly concealed by the contacts John could notice, and the hair was surely not that shade of black naturally. It looked like a car's Matt Black finish, soaking up all light.

However, that was observation only, and he didn't have a name to the face.

"Who are you?"

"A representative of CARMA. You can call me Miles."

* * *

From Miles, John eventually found out that CARMA was an organisation, independent of any country or governing body, and therefore of corrupting outside influences, which sought to play the role of a worldwide intelligence service.

Founded in the early twentieth century by an MI6 agent who didn't believe in his bosses, they had been sporadically growing since their founding, and had accomplished many impressive deeds in the name of goodwill.

Now, they had over a hundred teams, each of three specialised people, spread across forty countries, with sixteen major strongholds and training centres overall, at least two in each continent but Antarctica, which had none.

They also had informants in many major intelligence and trading companies, with which they tracked down possible suspicious people and locations, as well as recruited more members when needed. However, with all of that, they needed to be well-financed, and hence under-the-counter deals to receive payment for completing certain jobs for governments, or even without the governments even knowing, were required to keep the group afloat.

Hence, though they had saved most every country they had worked in from disaster of some kind, they were still regarded as small-scale, wide-spread pilferers by the majority of the civilised world.

* * *

He agreed to be an informant. It was important stuff, and needed to be done; the estimated "people saved" count kept by some techie said that CARMA had saved at least 500 million lives, quite likely more.

* * *

After calling in the cavalry to shut down the Tigers, getting involved in the resulting shootout, and taking part in an epic truck race to the island's only helipad before being lifted out by the SAS as he exploded his own truck and the one pursuing it in a single blast, he returned to England unscathed.

* * *

After several more missions, some slight assistance from CARMA on each one, (particularly Canada, where a hater of America (and, conveniently, a multi-millionaire,) had attempted to destroy much of its crops and livestock by smuggling poisonous chemicals produced under innocent guises in Canada to the source of the Mississippi, where it would pollute the river to which all the water in a third of the US (by area) flowed,) John Hazel was relatively high up in MI6, when he was first invited into the Head's office.

She, a mainly unremarkable woman called Ms. Flank, had only one peculiarity; she was an utter perfectionist. So much so that she had pictures of exactly what caused the retirement or death of each and every previous head of MI6 arranged along the walls.

This had long since been explained to John, so as he sat, waiting for her to arrive, there was only one question he wanted to ask.

"Why are two of the pictures the same?" was his first greeting to his boss, as he turned to face her.

It was like she knew everything by heart, or alternatively, had been asked that many times before. "Alex Rider was an outstanding field agent in his time. His career began at fourteen, and he never failed a mission. However, Mr. Blunt resigned shortly after Rider's death in connection with a security leak, and Blunt's former deputy, Ms. Jones, is suspected to have gone mad with the belief that his ghost was haunting her before her supposed suicide. He was the only cause found for either change in management."

* * *

The rest of the talk was simple congratulations, and a promise of a promotion sometime soon.

* * *

He was twenty-one when he was assigned a partner. Karen was her name, she was a tech genius and good at stealth, though her fighting wasn't the best. Nonetheless, they soon formed a close bond, as field agents do, and as one honeymoon act led to another it eventually became more and more real.

They were both twenty-two when they found out she was pregnant.

* * *

**So! Sorry this was late, but a lot of thought went into this chapter. Gadgets, people, organisations, and evil schemes. Not to mention CARMA, who I had invented in an idea for another fic that has integrated itself into this one somehow... You'll have to wait and see if I write that one, this'll have to be over first...**


	6. Henry Hazel

On the 8th september 2145, at 8:15, Karen Hazel was admitted to St. Dominic's hospital, as she was going into labour. At 10:14, she gave birth to a stillborn baby. He was posthumously named Henry Hazel, and buried at Highgate Cemetery the following day.

Carved on the marble tombstone were the words:

_**Henry Hazel**_

_A firstborn not born alive,_

_Somewhere,_

_His untainted soul may thrive,_

_As his body rests here._

Friends, family, and associates of the parents mourned as they did for the loss. They placed flowers, predominantly white, roses, tulips, genetically modified fuchsias, and the like, around the headstone as they spoke to and consoled John and Karen.

An hour later, three people entered the cemetery. They were not in a group, and they each came in a different way, but they all walked to the same grave, each visit a minute apart. The first two rested identical roses, with white petals and blood-red thorns, on opposite sides of the top of the tombstone, facing inwards. The last person took another rose, also identical, and also took a flask from his backpack.

He took the lid off the flask, causing freezing cold steam to billow out. He dipped the rose in so just the head was submerged, then took it out, hand gloved, and threw it to the floor in front of the grave.

The head, frozen solid by the liquid nitrogen, shattered. The man bent down, broke one of the gore-coloured thorns off the stalk, and placed it directly on top of the gravestone, between the other flowers, placing it in a manner that made it look oddly tear-shaped.

With that, he left. Neither he not the rest of his team would ever return to the grave of the son of the man they had worked with several times, fulfilling their duty to CARMA, though they would not forget the sadness.

* * *

**Well... I just thought it had been going a bit smoothly for them all so far, plus there was the issue of the fact that none of them were having more than one child, which seemed unrealistic, even in a country where the birth rate is drastically falling at the moment (I think), so here this is... Sorry it's so morbid, but this is not the end! Trust me!**


End file.
